While the processing of the Special Territorial Plan (PTE) remains at a standstill, the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Inés Rojas, announced that next week a new round of meetings will begin, mainly with all the mayors of the island, from which modifications could be introduced in the current document, increasing what it contemplates in terms of complementary leisure. However, the Minister of Territorial Policy, Carlos Espino, insists that it would be a mistake to include this offer in non-tourist areas, and pointed out that in Gran Canaria they are already paying the consequences for having committed that "mistake".
Thus, the conflicting positions remain the same within the Government Group of the Cabildo, one month after the end of an extensive round of meetings, held between May 19 and 23, and without any news since then regarding a PTE whose need for approval was "urgent", according to the PSOE. Now, neither sector of the tripartite even agrees on what has happened in this entire month of "impasse" around the issue.
"We have continued working since we left it the last day, which consisted of a meeting with the Biosphere Reserve Council. We are working, we have looked much more closely at all the content of the PTE, we have looked more closely at all the files of each of the plans; what was proposed in 91, what was proposed in 2000 and what proposal is currently there, so that from now on, next week, we will start with a whole round of meetings. We will meet with all the mayors, because they still have not presented me with anything about complementary leisure, and when they do, we will decide if what is intended fits, so that we can really get a definitive document", said Inés Rojas.
However, according to Carlos Espino, at this moment we are only "waiting for the Ministry of Territorial Policy to answer whether we can be exempted from the environmental assessment process, and from there, it will be up to us to make the decisions that we consider most appropriate". In turn, he insisted that complementary leisure offers cannot be included in the PTE outside the tourist areas due to "the limitations of the special territorial plans", so, contrary to what Inés Rojas intends, the Minister considers that "in the end, when we all specify proposals, we will realize that what fits at this moment is the specification of those facilities within the limits of the tourist areas currently defined".
In this regard, he mentioned that he recently spoke personally with "a person who was very linked to the drafting of the territorial plan of Gran Canaria, and he told me that one of the problems they have is that they have effectively placed a series of pieces of land outside the tourist areas for infrastructure issues, and they are faced with the problem that in practice, that leads to nothing, because it does not have the capacity to qualify land".
Faced with this, Espino insists that the PTE document must be approved as it is, "and from there, let's start trying to see what other type of equipment Lanzarote needs, but with the appropriate mechanisms".
Regarding the [ statements made to La Voz de Lanzarote by the national vice president of CC and mayor of Haría, José Torres Stinga ->7603], about that the PTE "was born badly" and does not believe that it will be approved in this Legislature, Espino responded: "From the point of view of what starts badly ends badly, Torres Stinga must remember what served as the basis for launching this PTE, which was an agreement of the previous Government Group, which we all said we respected. He must also remember that all this was endorsed by decisions we made in the Biosphere Reserve Council and in the Cabildo plenary. What we have done has been to comply with what we had all decided. If Torres Stinga has decided, or as vice president of Coalición Canaria, that this is not going to happen, he will have to explain why".
For her part, Inés Rojas said that in the initial document of the PTE, delivered by Espino, "we have looked at things that we can improve a lot", because "we should go to much more quality if possible", despite which she believes that "in the month of July we can have the document quite closed, in such a way that, if August gets in the way, then in September we can make the initial approval, or with a lot of luck, at the end of July".
